PRACTICE TEST 04

Passage 1
Europa is the smallest of planet Jupiter’s four largest moons and the second moon
out from Jupiter. Until 1979, it was just another astronomy textbook statistic. Then
came the close-up images obtained by the exploratory spacecraft Voyager 2, and within
Line days, Europa was transformed-in our perception, at least-into one of the solar system’s
(5) most intriguing worlds. The biggest initial surprise was the almost total lack of detail,
especially from far away. Even at close range, the only visible features are thin, kinked
brown lines resembling cracks in an eggshell. And this analogy is not far off the mark.

The surface of Europa is almost pure water ice, but a nearly complete absence of
craters indicates that Europa’s surface ice resembles Earth’s Antarctic ice cap. The
(10) eggshell analogy may be quite accurate since the ice could be as little as a few kilometers
thick –a true shell around what is likely a subsurface liquid ocean that , in turn, encases
a rocky core. The interior of Europa has been kept warm over the eons by tidal forces
generated by the varying gravitational tugs of the other big moons as they wheel around
Jupiter. The tides on Europa pull and relax in an endless cycle. The resulting internal heat
(15) keeps what would otherwise be ice melted almost to the surface. The cracklike marks on
Europa’s icy face appear to be fractures where water or slush oozes from below.

Soon after Voyager 2’s encounter with Jupiter in 1979, when the best images of
Europa were obtained, researchers advanced the startling idea that Europa’s subsurface
ocean might harbor life. Life processes could have begun when Jupiter was releasing a
(20) vast store of internal heat. Jupiter’s early heat was produced by the compression of the
material forming the giant planet. Just as the Sun is far less radiant today than the primal
Sun, so the internal heat generated by Jupiter is minor compared to its former intensity.
During this warm phase, some 4.6 billion years ago, Europa’s ocean may have been liquid
right to the surface, making it a crucible for life.

Passage 2
Both in what is now the eastern and the southwestern United States, the peoples of
the Archaic era (8,000-1,000 B.C) were, in a way, already adapted to beginnings of
cultivation through their intensive gathering and processing of wild plant foods. In both
Line areas, there was a well-established ground stone tool technology, a method of pounding
(5) and grinding nuts and other plant foods, that could be adapted to newly cultivated foods.
By the end of the Archaic era, people in eastern North America had domesticated certain
native plants, including sunflowers; weeds called goosefoot, sumpweed, or marsh elder;
and squash or gourds of some kind. These provided seeds that were important sources of
carbohydrates and fat in the diet.

(10) The earliest cultivation seems to have taken place along the river valleys of the
Midwest and the Southeast, with experimentation beginning as early as 7,000 years ago
and domestication beginning 4,000 to 2,000 years ago. Although the term “Neolithic” is
not used in North American prehistory, these were the first steps toward the same major
subsistence changes that took place during the Neolithic (8,000-2,000 B.C.) period
(15) elsewhere in the world.

Archaeologists debate the reasons for beginning cultivation in the eastern part of the
continent. Although population and sedentary living were increasing at the time, there is
little evidence that people lacked adequate wild food resources; the newly domesticated
foods supplemented a continuing mixed subsistence of hunting, fishing, and gathering

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 TOEFL Reading Comprehension

(20) wild plants, Increasing predictability of food supplies may have been a motive. It has been
suggested that some early cultivation was for medicinal and ceremonial plants rather than
for food. One archaeologist has pointed out that the early domesticated plants were all
weedy species that do well in open, disturbed habitats, the kind that would form around
human settlements where people cut down trees, trample the ground, deposit trash, and
(25) dig holes. It has been suggested that sunflower, sumpweed, and other plants almost
domesticated themselves, that is , they thrived in human –disturbed habitats, so humans
intensively collected them and began to control their distribution. Women in the Archaic
communities were probably the main experimenters with cultivation, because
ethnoarchaeological evidence tells us that women were the main collectors of plant food
and had detailed knowledge of plants.

Passage 3
Many ants forage across the countryside in large numbers and undertake mass
migrations; these activities proceed because one ant lays a trail on the ground for the others
to follow. As a worker ant returns home after finding a source of food, it marks the route
Line by intermittently touching its stinger to the ground and depositing a tiny amount of trail
(5 ) pheromone – a mixture of chemicals that delivers diverse messages as the context changes.
These trails incorporate no directional information and may be followed by other ants in
either direction.

Unlike some other messages, such as the one arising from a dead ant, a food trail has to
be kept secret from members of other species. It is not surprising then that ant species use
(10) a wide variety of compounds as trail pheromones. Ants can be extremely sensitive to these
signals. Investigators working with the trail pheromone of the leafcutter ant Atta texana
calculated that one milligram of this substance would suffice to lead a column of ants three
times around Earth.

The vapor of the evaporating pheromone over the trail guides an ant along the way,
(15) and the ant detects this signal with receptors in its antennae. A trail pheromone will
evaporate to furnish the highest concentration of vapor right over the trail, in what is called a
vapor space. In following the trail, the ant moves to the right and left, oscillating from side
to side across the line of the trail itself, bringing first one and then the other antenna into
the vapor space. As the ant moves to the right, its left antenna arrives in the vapor space.
(20) The signal it receives causes it to swing to the left, and the ant then pursues this new course
until its right antenna reaches the vapor space. It then swings back to the right, and so
weaves back and forth down the trail.

Passage 4
Native Americans probably arrived from Asia in successive waves over several
millennia, crossing a plain hundreds of miles wide that now lies inundated by 160 feet
of water released by melting glaciers. For several periods of time, the first beginning
around 60,000 B.C. and the last ending around 7,000 B.C., this land bridge was open. The
(5 ) first people traveled in the dusty trails of the animals they hunted. They brought with them
not only their families, weapons, and tools but also a broad metaphysical understanding,
sprung from dreams and visions and articulated in myth and song, which complemented
their scientific and historical knowledge of the lives of animals and of people. All this they
shaped in a variety of languages, bringing into being oral literatures of power and beauty.

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PRACTICE TEST 04

(10) Contemporary readers, forgetting the origins of western epic, lyric, and dramatic
forms, are easily disposed to think of “literature” only as something written. But on
reflection it becomes clear that the more critically useful as well as the more frequently
employed sense of the term concerns the artfulness of the verbal creation, not its mode of
presentation. Ultimately, literature is aesthetically valued, regardless of language, culture,
(15) or mode of presentation, because some significant verbal achievement results from the
struggle in words between tradition and talent. Verbal art has the ability to shape out a
compelling inner vision in some skillfully crafted public verbal form.

Of course, the differences between the written and oral modes of expression are not
without consequences for an understanding of Native American literature. The essential
(20) difference is that a speech event is an evolving communication, an “emergent form,” the
shape, functions, and aesthetic values of which become more clearly realized over the
course of the performance. In performing verbal art , the performer assumes responsibility
for the manner as well as the content of the performance, while the audience assumes the
responsibility for evaluating the performer’s competence in both areas. It is this intense
(25) mutual engagement that elicits the display of skill and shapes the emerging performance.
Where written literature provides us with a tradition of texts, oral literature offers a
tradition of performances.

Passage 5
The cities in the United States have been the most visible sponsors and beneficiaries
of projects that place art in public places. They have shown exceptional imagination in
applying the diverse forms of contemporary art to a wide variety of purposes. The
Line activities observed in a number of “pioneer” cities sponsoring art in public places – a
(5) broadening exploration of public sites, an increasing awareness among both sponsors
and the public of the varieties of contemporary artistic practice, and a growing public
enthusiasm – are increasingly characteristic of cities across the country. With many
cities now undergoing renewed development, opportunities are continuously emerging
for the inclusion or art in new or renewed public environments, including buildings,
(10) plazas, parks, and transportation facilities. The result of these activities is a group of
artworks that reflect the diversity of contemporary art and the varying character and
goals of the sponsoring communities.

In sculpture, the projects range from a cartoonlike Mermaid in Miami Beach by

Roy Lichtenstein to a small forest planted in New York City by Alan Sonfist. The use
(15) of murals followed quickly upon the use of sculpture and has brought to public sites the
work of artists as different as the realist Thomas Hart Benton and the Pop artist Robert
Rauschenberg. The specialized requirements of particular urban situations have further
expanded the use of art in public places: in Memphis, sculptor Richard Hunt has created
a monument to Martin Luther King, Jr., who was slain there; in New York, Dan Flavin
(20) and Bill Brand have contributed neon and animation works to the enhancement of mass
transit facilities. And in numerous cities, art is being raised as a symbol of the
commitment to revitalize urban areas.

By continuing to sponsor projects involving a growing body of art in public places,

cities will certainly enlarge the situations in which the public encounters and grows
(25) familiar with the various forms of contemporary art. Indeed, cities are providing artists
with an opportunity to communicate with a new and broader audience. Artists are
recognizing the distinction between public and private spaces, and taking that into account
when executing their public commissions. They are working in new, often more durable
media, and on an unaccustomed scale.

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